The Aurora plate. Relief from Copernicus GLO-30; rivers and lakes from USGS NHD; watersheds from the USGS Watershed Boundary Dataset; roads and city limits from Census TIGER 2024.
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
81° on Nov. 12, 1989, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1962. Next is 81° in 2016.
Aurora’s center stands about 1,400 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,310 ft to 1,490 ft, a difference of 180 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Osagean Series (limestone), from the Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old.
The section below crosses 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 54×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 21 mi of the line.
Limestone, siltstone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 0.8 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 0.7 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale.
Heights from Copernicus GLO-90 (a surface model: it includes buildings and tree canopy); summits from USGS GNIS; rivers from USGS NHDPlus HR; rock from the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation.
A raindrop that lands in Aurora reaches the Gulf of America by way of Chat Creek, the Spring, the Neosho, the Arkansas and the Mississippi: about 1,250 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Murray Lake and Ozark Lake.
600 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Aurora; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Aurora has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 89° in July; winter nights fall to about 22° in January. A normal year brings about 12 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 46 inches of water.
On November 14 Aurora normally reaches 58° and falls to 34°. The record high is 80°, in 1999; the record low 11°, in 2018. The most rain on this date, 1.90 in, fell in 1993.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1962 at Billings 1 SW, 10 miles northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
